What’s in a MNAME?

Nomenclature, Tamil Nadu style

About six months ago, I was invited to the inauguration of a neighbourhood beauty parlour. Whether it had to do with their impression that I was a celebrity of some sort – owing to recent pictures of mine in a newspaper in connection with my whereabouts, and that all would be forgiven if I returned – or whether they were hinting that I could do with some beautification, I do not know. But, being a long-time supporter of local enterprise, I went. Also, the proprietor, Mrs Vallarmathi, who hand delivered the invite, looked like the result of an impromptu jugalbandi between Mike Tyson and Shubha Mudgal.

Tamil Nadu is known for many things – not least the fact that we have the highest number of fatal road accidents, which may stem from our bizarre habit of eating noodles with curd. But a much-ignored, uniquely Tamil Nadu trait that needs to be explored is the creativity we show in the field of nomenclature. For instance, one of TN’s most popular brands of men’s underwear is named Poomex. Seriously. You can Google it if you don’t believe me. Then there’s its female counterpart, maybe not as revered but as real, nonetheless: Aroma panties. There’s also Mammary Men’s Fashion, Shabby Dresses, Burn-Out Point Gym and Hand Jobs Handicrafts, to name a few.

So, in spite of once witnessing Mrs Vallarmathi tucking under her arm and carrying like a Versace clutch an errant auto driver, I plucked up the courage to ask her what the logic behind naming her parlour was. Given below – in easy-to understand steps – is the thought process that preceded it.

The first name the family came up with, based on the suggestion of a nostalgic cousin from America, was Pretty Woman. Not the most original, I would’ve thought, but serviceable. Just as they were getting the name board ready, Kishkindan, Mrs Vallarmathi’s real estate broker husband, suggested it might be worthwhile changing it to PrettyWomen. After all, you did want a clientele consisting of several women as opposed to one.

Their daughter, who had thankfully taken after her father in the looks department – which accounted for her slimness, her pencil moustache and slouchy gait – thought it would be good to add a The. Soon after, Vallarmathi’s sister said that The Pretty Women could be anything from a hardware store to a laddoo outlet, which in Tamil Nadu is a possibility. She suggested the parlour be named The Pretty Women Beauty Solutions.

When letterheads and tariff cards bearing this name were perused by “Numberz” Narasingaa Raao, the family numerologist, he looked much like the auto driver who had meddled with Mrs Vallarmathi. He pulled out a calculator, Rajaji’s Mahabharata, a lemon cut in half and some snuff, and made quick calculations using these ingredients. After fifteen minutes, he concluded that, if that was the name they went with, Mr Kishkindan would elope with Kanaka the hairdresser and Mrs Vallarmathi would develop rickets within three months. The numbers didn’t lie, he said. The family returned to the drawing board, but not before Mrs Vallarmathi punched Kishkindan’s lights out as a preemptive measure.

A week later, “Numberz” Narasingaa Raao came up with a solution, for a fee, of course: The Women’s Prettty Beauty Solutionz. He said that it was pure suicide to have two t’s in sequence, stating that had Amul Butter been Amul Buttter as he’d suggested, it would have been bigger than Microsoft. Also, according to Raao, our epics frowned on adjectives preceding nouns, hence the relocation of Women’s to before Prettty.

The matter should have ended here but it didn’t. When the name board was being put in place, it accidentally came undone as Vallarmathi was walking under it. The result: three stitches on her forehead and a tsk-tsking “Numberz” Narasingaa Raao saying that a grave mistake had been committed. How could they have not told him the entrance to the parlour was in the south-east corner? That changed everything. A “Sri” had to be added to the name to appease Lord Ganesha. Hence the final name, TheSri Women’s Prettty BeautySolutionz, was what I saw at the inauguration.

A couple of months later, the parlour closed. The story went that “Numberz” Narasingaa Raao had taken Vallarmathi for all she was worth. She had returned to her native Kumbakonam while he is doing time under Section 420. He says he’s happy because 4 + 2 + 0 = 6, which is his lucky number. Just yesterday, I saw that a restaurant had come up where the parlour used to be. It’s called Leaning Tower Food Waves. Apparently, it serves Chinese.

Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is the writer of Ice Boys In Bell-Bottoms and Jump Cut. He is considering changing his name to Shastripalli Krishnazz Devo.